Raven Hogue

Scaffolding

by Raven Hogue

My twelve-year-old brother Brandon is a graffiti artist writing with the end of a broken rib. He maces white garage doors, waving spray cans to fend offthe sirens chasing his right hand's rugged strokes. Careless in his crime, he doesn't clock-out when flashing lights discover him punching in between the moon and sun's shift. Faded against a squad car's spotlight, he bows his head into a cave of black seats. A police officer pats plum shadows into his eye sockets as he swallows spray can spritzes. I wash holding cell and yellow paint from my brother's clothes. Another fine for our parents to fight over. Brandon's fingers are wrecking balls.

My father plows my mother's earth cheeks. He tries to convince my brother and me our mother looks proper with handprints crouching in her skin. That her lips look handsome with mahogany soil weeping from them. Her blood pebbles on the bottom of my shoes. When we hug, I feel our father's breath nodding at my neck. His fist bruises my ribs as he knuckles into hers. Brandon turns up the volume on the TV and looks past it. We share eardrums. Our parents voices, nothing but hisses and sparks. Brandon wades in static while I feel the shock.

On stage, I am the nervous sway of prairie grass determined to find my roots. Building poetry on a mic is dangerous construction. Shyness is a poor replacement for scaffolds and parents were never there to properly secure rafters Sandpaper scrubs vocal chords when I breathe. The ankles of my words tremble.